The minority party in parliament urged the government to register SIMs with other National Identification Cards.
After the government chose to solely use the Ghana Card for the procedure, this happened.
They contend that section (1) of Legislative Instrument (211) does not restrict such activities to the Ghana Card alone.
The Minority in Parliament is demanding the inclusion of other national ID cards as a pre-requisite in the ongoing SIM card re-registration exercise.
It would be recalled that the government has ordered a re-registration of all sim cards as part of moves to deal with digital fraud.
As a requirement, one is demanded to present a Ghana card as a pre-requisite for registration.
But at a press conference, the minority caucus on the Communication Committee kicked against the move to limit the registration to only the Ghana card.
The deputy minority spokesperson on the committee, Sam Nartey George, argued that the Legislative Instrument (211) clause (1) does not limit such exercises only to the Ghana card.
They describe the move to disconnect all persons who fail to register their sim cards by March next year, with the Ghana card as an affront to the rights of the citizen, he added.
The Minority proposed four-point steps to making the process a robust one including the withdrawal of the threat to disconnect all sim cards that fail to register by next year and scrapping of the physical visit to offices of the National Identification Authority (NIA )office for registration purposes.
The re-registration of mobile SIM cards started on 1st October 2021.
The exercise, which will last for six months, will end on 31st March 2022.
Any SIM which is not registered at the end of this exercise will be blocked, the Ministry of Communications and Digitization has disclosed.
In a bid to rid the country’s cyberspace of fraud, and monitor and track down persons who use their phones for criminal activities, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia announced that plans were underway to organize a sim re-registration exercise.
Addressing the 5th Ghana CEO Summit in Accra, the Vice President noted that any individual who fails to take part in the exercise risks losing his or her SIM card.
“We all have to do that otherwise we’ll lose that SIM card. That will really give us a real identity for all MoMo transactions. For example, it takes away fraud that is taking place like SIM box and through MoMo”, he added.